Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on October 8, 2019
… is this recent Facebook post by the great economic historian Robert Higgs:
Suppose you wanted to put in place a U.S. trade policy that would (1) hurt all American consumers directly or indirectly, (2) hurt almost all American producers directly or indirectly, (3) reduce the efficiency of the U.S. economy across the board, and (4) create a great deal of regime uncertainty among investors and thereby diminish investment and economic growth, while diverting producers’ efforts from innovation and production to lobbying for exemptions and privileges of their own.
You need not waste a lot of time figuring out what such a trade policy would look like. Just sit back and look at what the Trump administration has done.
DBx: Anyone who doubts the truth of the above is (1) very bad at economics, or (2) blinded by partisanship or by ideology, or (3) a rent-seeker seeking intellectual cover for unjust privileges – or some combination of these three.
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